The Severed Arm

I watched this and immediately got a sense of film from my childhood (films appropriate for my age!) with the synthesizer soundtrack and the station wagons. Anyway back to this.

An annoyingly degraded print didn't help my enjoyment neither did the premise. The film begins with a timeline from five years previously. A group of six men go on some caving expedition and predictably get trapped. With ever growing facial hair their chances of survival are of course reducing until one of the six comes up with an idea that may increase their depleted food stocks! Let's cut off the arm of one of us and eat the human flesh. As you do in these situations.

Drawing lots one poor member of the six has his arm severed as in the title. His life when/if he gets out of this cave ruined as such. What makes the situation even worse is a rescue party arrives very shortly after the dastardly deed is committed.

Quelle surprise a mental breakdown and the action returns to five years later the poor guy in total mental breakdown mode and out for revenge on the other five guys. Murder (what method?), fear, retribution. A daughter of the perpetrator joins the film as the others fight for survival.

Predictable suspense but a horrific premise.

One of the unfortunate heroes hints at the sixty sailors lost at sea;but there's also a French nursery rhyme ("IL était un petit navire" =once upon a time a little ship )which goes like this :

"They drew straws To know who would be eaten.

The lot fell on the youngest, The cabin boy who set to crying Next they ponder with what sauce The poor child will be eaten."

With gore kept to the minimum,the scene in the cave (which follows the plot of the folk song ,so to speak ) ,and the terrifying ending (which will make your hair stand on hair ) make stuff like "saw" almost look like fairytales. Remember it was made in the early seventies!

There's a slight sag in the tension towards the middle of the movie which has a tendency to become repetitive ,but it regains its strength in the final sequences .

A must for horror movies!

What a shame that a movie with this title will only appeal to the usual high school braindead gorehounds. It is nothing of the sort. This is quite a thoughtful and meticulous revenge film. A gang of starving men trapped in a pit finally decide on a desperate day of hunger to prey on the weakest man, thereby cutting off his arm and feeding. Ironically, the men are saved hours later, but the Wounded is spouting crazy cannibalism talk. The remaining men enter into a conspiracy, saying they severed his arm only to save him from a worse cave-in mishap. What follows is a story of revenge in the COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO tradition. In retrospect, this film is definitely more of a drama than it is a horror film. But as most people assume this picture is a drive-in splatterfest, it will only attract the immature, shock-seeking crowd. What a shame. The ending of this film is true poetic justice.

These five dudes go hiking and then get trapped in a cave after one of them chips away at the fragile structure seemingly holding it all together. Boom, cave-in. They have no food and little water, yet somehow they all survive for a couple of weeks. And then and only then do they draw straws to see who's gonna have to lose an appendage so they can eat something. (Probably raw, since there'd be no sure way for the smoke from a fire to escape the cave.) Anyway, they are quickly rescued after making that fun decision. Five years later, one of them gets a severed arm in the mail. OMG could it be the guy they ate part of? Nice twist at the end, although it won't be a surprise if you've been paying any sort of attention. Protagonists are all kind of stupid.

"The Severed Arm" has a very low score on IMDb and the reviews are generally unfavorable. Oddly, I actually liked the film and thought it very unique and worth seeing. I could be wrong, but I was surprised as the title sure makes it sound like a terrible film.

The first part of the film is told as a flashback. A group of six guys go exploring in a creaky old cave. Unfortunately, one of the guys is a stupid idiot and he causes a cave-in...and they are trapped for two weeks. Not surprisingly, they are starving when one of them insists that they only way to survive is to eat PART of one of them. He insists that they draw lots and the loser is eaten...in part. Not all of them are in agreement but he pushes them to do this. After ripping off the poor loser's arm, a rescue party arrives--and the folks all agree to lie about what happened and say that the man with the missing are was injured and they HAD to do surgery on him!

Five years pass. Now bad things start happening to the five who perpetrated this arm-carnage. Some are dismembered...some are killed. But there is a special punishment for the ring leader!

I thought the film very original, quite clever and set a wonderful and tense mood. Is it a great film? Nah...but for what it is, it's surprisingly watchable. Also, I was glad that the who arm ripping off angle was not overly gross and gratuitous!